SpaceX To Launch NASA Team-3 Astronauts: How To Watch

Exit Crew Dragon. Enter another Crew Dragon.

On Wednesday night, SpaceX will carry another team of astronauts to the International Space Station for about six months. The mission is called Crew-3 and its astronauts will replace Crew-2, a quartet of European and Japanese astronauts NASA completed Monday night in a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

When and how can I watch the launch?

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to be lifted at 9:03 p.m. ET on Wednesday, with the astronauts on the Crew Dragon sitting at the top. NASA will begin the live broadcast of the launch at 4:45 PM on NASA TV and YouTube channel.

The weather around NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Falcon 9 will launch, is 80 percent favorable, according to the US Space Force’s 45th Air Squadron.

Why was the early departure of Crew-3 delayed?

Crew-3 was originally scheduled for release on Halloween, but has been plagued by multiple delays.

The first delay on October 31 was due to bad weather, and the next delay was over a “minor medical issue” with one of the astronauts. NASA declined to specify the nature of the problem or specify which astronaut it affected, along with stating that it had nothing to do with Covid-19.

Faced with compounding delays, NASA chose to focus on returning Crew-2’s astronauts from the space station to Earth before launching Crew-3. This prevented a simple transition in orbit between the two crews. Now, there is only one NASA astronaut on the space station and two Russian astronauts on board, a small number of people complicating the maintenance of the space station.

Who are the astronauts?

Three of the four astronauts aboard Crew-3 are flying into space for the first time.

• The mission’s commander, Raja Chari, is 44 and will be the fifth Indian astronaut to go into space. He was a test pilot and Air Force colonel who flew combat missions in Iraq before joining NASA’s astronaut corps in 2017.

• Crew-3 mission specialist Matthias Maurer is a German astronaut representing the European Space Agency. Mr. Maurer, 51, joined the European astronaut association in 2015.

• Kayla Barron, 34, also joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2017. She was among the first group of women to serve on a Navy submarine. He and Mr. Chari are members of NASA’s Artemis astronaut squad – a staff of 18 astronauts who may travel to or around the Moon in the future.

• Tom Marshburn, 61, is on his third journey to orbit since joining NASA’s astronaut squad in 2004. Mr. Marshburn has flown on two spacecraft in the past, serving as a crew member on NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2009 and beyond. Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft in 2013.